Tag Archives: Torchwood

It’s a grown-up version of The Sarah Jane Adventures, with an adult leading a group of teens defending the Earth. Only not as good. And with echoes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Only a bit British, obv.

The opening titles evoke the feel of both Doctor Who and The Tomorrow People but with a naff teen song playing over them… the tune playing over the end credits is better.

We get the usual character introduction to our four teen heroes, who are all misfits, and their teacher, who is an unlikeable bitch.

The story takes a huge info-dump when its revealed that one of them is an alien and the teacher is an alien too, which comes as no surprise whatsoever.

There was a war between the Rhodia and the Quill who were then both wiped out by the Shadowkin, who look like distant cousins of the Pyroviles with a dash of Tim Curry from Legend. The leader of the Shadowkin is played by Paul Marc Davis, whose voice you will instantly recognise as he was the bloke who played the Trickster in TSJA, whicn I suppose counts as another easter egg if you want it to.

So, the last two survivors of each race, the Rhodia [which sounds like Rhodean, the girls’ school] and the Quill, were rescued by the Doctor after the Shadowkin slaughtered everyone and brought to Coal Hill, like some sort of galactic witness protection scheme. Only the idea of witness protection is that you don’t draw attention to yourself, maybe Twelvy should have told them that…

Speaking of Twelvy, Capaldi turns up at 35 minutes in and he’s only in it for about 9 minutes, which is a damn shame but he’s only there to set up the premise of two stranded aliens being forced to work together with a bunch of misfit humans to defend the Earth from The Alien Of The Week. Not like we’ve seen that before…

There’s no Ian Chesterton but June Hudson does a bit more acting as the woman in the shop [!] and there’s a couple of easter eggs on the notice board…

There’s the obligatory homosexual relationship and the compulsory BAME characters so beloved of the left-wing liberals who make our telly for us as well as the voyeuristic torso shot of the buff hero prince and a gratuitously bloody death that evokes Carrie with one of the team getting his leg cut off. And there’s even more blood next week by the looks of things.

Since we’ve nothing better to do between now and Sunday night, lets keep ourselves busy with more pointless speculation than you could shake a perigosto stick at by wondering if it really is Peter Capaldi who’s going to be revealed as The Twelfth Doctor at the weekend.

The rumours are that he’s The One and the bookies have stopped taking bets on him, and since there’s no such thing as a poor bookmaker, you can be sure that they genuinely suspect that those bets are being made by people with inside knowledge.

So let’s take a quick look at the possibility, shall we?

Even without the help of a quick mock-up like this I can certainly imagine Capaldi in the role and would be happy if he got it.

He would be the second actor to have appeared in the show as a different character before playing the Doctor, like Colin Baker before him…

And, like Tennant before him he is a genuine and huge Fan, unlike that MNG Eccles…

And he would have the distinction of having appeared in both Who and Torchwood…